Tropical forest tree inventories and plot projects have generated large amounts of data over many decades, but much of this data is in paper or older digitized formats, or still undiscovered. These data sets are in danger of being lost and with them our ability to assess historical changes that can inform research and policy development for land use change and landscape resilience. These legacy datasets are invaluable for understanding how tropical forests, biodiversity, and carbon storage change through time, including the cumulative impacts of changes in land use and climate. Historical data can also help instruct current and future forest management.
To locate these data sets, we are reaching out via various electronic media to researchers, practitioners, institutions, and development agencies. We are also searching older compilations (ATROFI-UK and TROPIS) of tropical forest datasets. ATROFI-UK has metadata on c. 30 studies in need of curation and TROPIS refers to > 6000 plots in natural forest and plantations. The inventories and plots located are being cross referenced against lists of curated datasets such as Forestplots.net and others under the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD), to determine which datasets are not already in a long-term data repository.
Results/Conclusions
Currently the project has identified > 40 inventory and plot-based studies in need of curation, in countries ranging from Vanatu to Ghana to Belize. Unfortunately, we also found that the data has been lost on at least 1600 plots, highlighting the importance of securing such datasets for long term availability. Other issues to be settled include appropriate formats for long-term digital curation, and data reliability, ownership, and access, and of course, funding.
We invite wide participation in the quest for unsecured historical data sets. The guiding principle of the project is that the past can help enlighten the future management and restoration of lands to which the datasets refer.